


The Ever Circling Years

by Silvergirl



Series: Drawn to Stars [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mostly Fluff, Rotating POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 14,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27719263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvergirl/pseuds/Silvergirl
Summary: Snippets from different Decembers in theDrawn to Starsuniverse.  (They'll make sense on their own, though.) Each chapter ends with Miss Davis's prompt for the day.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Drawn to Stars [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585843
Comments: 733
Kudos: 138
Collections: 2020 Advent Ficlet Challenge





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “For lo! the days are hastening on,  
> By prophet-bards foretold,  
> When with the ever circling years  
> Comes round the age of gold.”  
> (Edmund Sears, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," 1849)

**2021**

Oh God no, it’s Christmas again. Meaning it’s late November. Surely it was just Christmas five minutes ago.

Christmas in Baker Street is low-key; we don’t make a fuss about decorating or entertaining or gift-giving, we just do what we feel like, and it’s all fine. But outside of our home there are _people_ , and _expectations_ , which those people call “traditions” (actually just glorified habits and obligations).

Christmas in Oxford Street is enough to turn me full Scrooge (pre-conversion, obviously). It’s hard enough to maintain a decent walking pace the rest of the year—let alone when shoppers and window-shoppers choke it, and the street is cleared for that ridiculous “Santas on rollerskates” event. The only redeeming feature is that Christmas brings in its train a reliable uptick in murders.

Christmas at my parents’ house makes that uptick quite understandable. It’s a blend of the familiar and the uncomfortable—in fact, the second comes from the first. There’s laughter and warmth, candlelight with curtains drawn against the early dark, and everyone mostly of good cheer. But underneath are the layers of years past, bubbling with the sorrows and resentments that I’m to understand saturate all families, and certainly didn’t spare a family of eccentric geniuses.

Christmas with Watson is—rather nicer than Christmas before her. Her extravagant excitement at making things, and doing things, and giving things, is irresistible if not infectious. Watching her sit at the table pasting paper ornaments on a paper tree for her grandparents and her Nana should surely not make anyone as happy as it makes me.

Christmas with Watson gives her father a pretext to do things he didn’t do before. He pretends not to enjoy any of it, stringing the twinkle-lights, wrapping the tiny presents for her stocking, even decorating the tree. (It’s getting taller every year, he needn’t think I haven’t noticed.)

Christmas with John is the epitome of our life together. The essence of the two, no, the three of us, distilled into our signature extremes: the delightful and the exasperating, the riotous and the serene, the affectionate and the ravenously passionate, the transcendent and the embarrassingly human. Our month of December rescripts all the Decembers we lived before we became what we are now.

So here it is come round again, for God’s sake. Weeks of playing obligatory Advent tunes on the violin, of deriding the holiday frenzy, of juggling _Family Life Squared_ with _Murder Month_. (And, at John’s insistence, carefully concealing the latter from Watson.)

Ah, well. ’Tis the season.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, readers, for being here and for commenting. In the Dread Year 2020, comments are so very restorative. 
> 
> Thank you, MissDavis, for the 2020 Advent Ficlet Challenge.


	2. Chapter 2

**2017**

Bologna seems to have two churches for every bar, and that’s saying something. The one that dominates the historic center isn’t the cathedral, and I’m to understand that this is very important, but I’ve no idea why. I’m afraid I got lost in Sherlock’s fathomless green eyes as he was explaining it. Maybe St Peter and St Petronius were bitter rivals? Dunno. But once a day, the actual cathedral of St Peter gets its own back—for anyone staying at our hotel, at least.

We were tired that one morning, so very tired. Nights and days spent making love: deliriously happy, exhilarating, and energising. Talking about what had gone so wrong between us: certainly that was rewarding, and revealing. But also sobering, and somehow draining.

We’d talked all night, it felt like, and only drifted off around dawn, when the rest of the city was stirring. Noisy bin men hosing down the streets and carrying off the rubbish. Metal shutters opening with a ringing clash. Loud and cheerful voices amplified by the porticoes and the canal. We weren’t going to have a deep sleep, but it was all fine.

I turned to see him watching me with that unblinking stare and no discernible expression on his face. It made me wonder whether he too was finding the _talking_ exhausting, and I decided it was time for a thorough mind-emptying distraction. We were already well in sync in lovemaking, and in no time at all we were thinking of nothing but each other, the immediacy of it.

We strained and pushed as though to blend our very selves, as though living in two bodies was never going to be close enough. I felt him getting close to climax, trembling and collapsing just as I was.

As if on cue, a brazen clangour pealed out that I thought would explode the walls and bring the roof down on our heads: the wild, sweet _Te Deums_ of St Peter’s bells.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You tell me these things.  
> But I look at you, heart of silver,  
> White heart-flame of polished silver,  
> Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,  
> And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,  
> While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells."
> 
> Amy Lowell, _Te Deum Laudamus_


	3. Chapter 3

**2024**

Upon the whole, I prefer warmth. The only real payoff to being cold is warming up after, preferably with my icy hands and feet in John’s care. Or in a jacuzzi, or a sauna. Anywhere the heat sinks deep into the bone marrow.

I don’t romanticise a white Christmas, or ice skating, or the gelid gusts that whistle down London’s alleyways. I can endure being trapped in a sub-zero meat freezer for a case, but not being cold for _recreational_ purposes, or sentimental ones.

With one exception. Being cold adds something—unexpected—to sex.

By definition, the cold provokes unpromising bodily reactions: muscles tense up, teeth chatter, gooseflesh stipples the skin. Genitals run for cover, so to speak. None of that seems propitious even for caresses, let alone full-on congress. But it does focus the mind, wonderfully.

The key is to stop resisting the cold and accept it. Once that’s done I can embrace it or discard it, it is no longer a factor. If anything, the cold can become an advantage, as I discovered one memorable first of my many—call them nights—with John.

The skin grows hypersensitive to anything even remotely pleasurable, particularly if warm.

The challenge of falling body temperature becomes an advantage for prolonging pleasure.

Sleepiness is definitely not a danger, the way it is in a toasty bed in a heated room.

Since that first time in Baker Street, when I discovered what unexpected effects cold could produce, it’s a tradition. One of our first frosty December nights I’ll slip into the bedroom at dusk, turn off the radiators and open the window a bit beyond the usual centimetre. And once Watson goes up to bed, and John closes her door behind him, I’ll meet him on the landing and whisper, “Come to bed, John. It’s chilly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The episode Sherlock refers to is in ch. 53, ['Mending'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20951528/chapters/51619168), of _Drawn to Stars_.


	4. Chapter 4

**2023**

I'd never have imagined that Sherlock was going to become quite such a Christmas animal. He always seemed far too cool and cynical for all that. Should have known that once he let his façade splinter, all kinds of “sentiment” would come oozing out the cracks.

It was Rosie’s doing, of course. She didn’t know he had a “thinking machine” reputation to protect, so she always just charged right in, didn’t defer at all to his image. Then she'd tug and nudge until he caved, looking very gratified to be forced to do what he wanted to do all along.

It was just a bit of Christmas creep, early on. The holiday started earlier and earlier, and seem to last later and later. Then it was Christmas sprawl: first just the sitting room, then the nursery (she was getting too big to call it that, she kept reminding me), and then the kitchen. At least the pine-scented candle in the loo served an actual purpose, but I was having none of their Christmas-themed hand towels, and so I told them both. Why is it that decorative hand towels never do anything to actually dry your hands?

Then one fourth of December I came home to find the street door obscured under a whacking great wreath, the usual evening peace overcome by Christmas music playing at full blast, and the banister completely unusable for all the pine and holly ( _holly!_ ) garlands wound around it. _That'll be a big help to Mrs H_ , I thought sarcastically, only to watch her float confidently up the stairs, carrying a plate of freshly baked biscuits and needing no banister at all.

A moment later I followed her upstairs, to see the loves of my life giggling like the schoolgirls that only one of them actually was. They were fastening a branch of mistletoe in the sitting room doorway, Rosie on a ladder and Sherlock steadying it while she dusted the greenery with silver glitter, most of which landed on his head to blend with the silver threading his dark hair. Mrs Hudson deposited the biscuits in the kitchen and joined them. None of them had heard me over the music.

In my driest Da voice I asked, “What’s all this? You going to be decorating the whole street next?”

They all started, looking a little sheepish. Sherlock came to draw me over and kiss me, a bit unsteadily, under the mistletoe, while Mrs Hudson braced the ladder and Rosie sang out, “Deck the halls, Da! _Deck the halls!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I haven't said lately how much I love comments, here I am saying it again: anything from emojis to secret code! But also: 2020 is a steep challenge for almost everyone, and no one should add "must ... comment ... on ... fic" to their to-do list. To quote a wise man, "it's all fine."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ask for your willing suspension of disbelief, if you please, because no responsible animal shelter would _ever_ lend itself to the feckless improvisations of this chapter and the next.  
> If suspension of disbelief is impossible, reflect that Rosie a. studied misdirection and shameless manipulation at the knee of Sherlock Holmes and b. is smart enough to have masterfully misled the shelter staff as to her actual goals.

**2033**

My dads were never going to admit it, not in a million years. But they were _gutted_ when I decided to go to Italy for uni.

Like it wasn’t their own fault, for pity’s sake. I may've grown up speaking French and English, but we spent almost all our holidays together in Italy, to the point that even Da learned to get by passably in the language. Italian women found his accent charming, at any rate.

Ba’s Italian was flawless, wherever in Italy we went. He had listening and parroting down to a fine art, so he could toss in a local dialect term and a couple of pronunciation markers and have men _and_ women swooning at his feet.

But the fact that they’d been the ones to make Italy my favourite place didn’t make it any easier for them to send me there for years on end. Da had been hoping I’d go no farther than Oxford or Cambridge; Ba held out secret hopes for London itself. So Salerno was going to be hard on them.

That’s when it hit me. They needed something to fill that empty nest. Not another kid, obviously. We’re pretty triadic that way, now Nana’s gone. But something ... noisy. Affectionate. And fun. Definitely, fun.

I started haunting the shelters, and interviewing possible matches. A senior dog, maybe. Or one with an injury. Something that demanded attention and care.

Of course, for that matter a _puppy_ demanded attention and care. A puppy was the very definition of needy, and noisy, and affectionate, and fun. Just the distraction the dads needed, when I left for Italy in mid-January.

And right around the Solstice, there he was. A whole litter got dropped off, honeygold and honeybrown, part Alsatian, part collie. The plumpest, fuzziest, sweetest-smelling puppies in the history of dogdom. I picked out the—oh, who am I kidding, he picked me out. He was cocky, and pushy, and he demanded attention, and he walked over his litter mates to get it.

I went shopping for everything my internet searches told me newly weaned puppies needed, and arranged to collect my pick of the litter on Christmas Eve. The wretched dads never would put a puppy in _my_ stocking—I was going to get my own back. I couldn't wait to see them bicker over training him, argue about naming him. This was going to be perfect.

But when I got there, there were two left. Two. And I couldn’t face, somehow, leaving the other one there. It didn’t matter to the little runt that it was Christmas, I told myself. But it did matter that he’d already lost all his other litter mates, and I was going to take the last one and leave him alone in that disinfectant-scented, fluorescently-lighted place. I just—I couldn’t.

Good thing I'd got the medium-size puppy-carrier, because my little flock had just got not one but _two_ shepherds.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

**2033**

By the time I got them back to 221B, I knew it was a terrible idea. They always say a puppy is not a Christmas present. A puppy is not a good thing to surprise someone with. And two puppies are three times as annoying as one, as everyone riding the tube with us that night can attest.

What had I been thinking? Why had I given up on the practical, sensible idea of a senior dog with a mild but chronic health problem? What made me think that after finally getting rid of the kid, my dads would want to tie down their new-found freedom with _two puppies_?

I hardly slept that night. And it wasn’t their fault, they were as good as gold. Quiet as mice when I smuggled them up the stairs to my room. Cuddled up to each other and to me, almost but not quite under the covers, they were out like a light when I turned out my own. But I lay awake and agonised.

I turned it over from every angle, but every scenario ended in my returning them to the shelter the day after Christmas. Like some stupid schoolgirl who couldn’t think things through in advance.

Well, at least the puppies and the dads could have one day together. I’d seen Ba with puppies at Gran and Granda’s, and he would love playing with them, until they got messy. And Da would put up with anything that made Ba shine and go boyish. (They’d be disgusting if they weren’t so adorable.)

A couple of times in the night the pups woke up, and I popped them onto the magic mat that was supposed to facilitate training them. Hissed whispered praises at them that probably weren't very effective as positive reinforcement. Once they were awake, of course, they had to roughhouse and scuffle and nip at each other, while I tried to hush them, or at least muffle them with the blankets.

Not a restful night at all. At six I gave up trying to get to sleep. It’d been awhile since I woke my parents on Christmas morning, so I was pretty sure I could surprise them out of a deep sleep.

I put the puppies to do their business on the little mat, then gave their fuzzy coats a quick brushing. There was only one collar, so instead I put a Christmas bow on each little neck. I’d loaded up the laundry basket with red and green towels, and popped the puppies into it and took it downstairs to the bedroom. I knocked, _obviously_. (Some lessons are too searing to ever be forgot.)

Ba’s deepest morning rumble: “ _Watson, it isn’t even light out_.” Well, I wasn’t going to wait until 9 a.m., stewing about the puppies.

“Ba. Da. Father Christmas left this in the wrong room.” I turned on the light and gently emptied the laundry basket onto the bed. To the end of my days I will never forget the _confusione_ , and the laughing, and the look on Da’s face when he saw the look on Ba’s.

“ _Puppies_ , John,” was quite literally all Ba could say, as he sniffed the indescribable sweetness of the littlest one’s breath.

The puppies hijacked the day, as puppies are wont to do, and there was no further thought of returning them to the shelter. There was bickering about their names (turns out one was female, whoopsie). There was distress about puppy poo (“You did know they do this, right, Ba?”). For a last Christmas before I left home as a grownup, it was about as perfect as I could ever have wished.

When I kissed my dads goodnight, I turned back and looked at them, each in his chair by the fire. Da was holding the big showy one, fiddling with his silky ears while the pup dozed; Ba was deep in conversation with the little wary one. The expression on both my fathers’ faces was the same: pure joy.


	7. Chapter 7

**2033**

From a child I’ve had idiosyncratically sensitive skin, more attuned to aesthetic pleasure than to objective comfort or discomfort. I can endure burns, for example, with more equanimity than I can the sense impression of certain textures. Some artificial fibres, for example, can bring on actual nausea, particularly if they look as though they will feel quite different.

For some months after we met, John thought it was “a posh thing” (this was years before I made him banish that word from his lexicon, at least in connection with me). As time went on he realised it was a fact of neurological processing, not a preference or an affectation. By the time I returned from the dead he had stopped scoffing at my affinity for merino wool, or high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

So the throw on the sofa in 221B was chosen for comfort, not elegance, and the blankets on the bed could be of only one brand (God forbid they should ever stop making them). When John and I finally began to share that bed, the blankets were quickly established as sacrosanct. He accepted this without a blink, but he still tested that status from time to time, and found it unaltered.

It is a marker of how dear Watson is to me that she, and only she, was allowed, and only in her babyhood, to treat those blankets with cavalier disregard for their cleanliness and their longevity. Only she was forgiven for (dear God) _throwing up_ on the heavy woolen one, and doing unspeakably worse to the lightweight summer one. Anyone else would have been defenestrated, repeatedly and with vigour.

Until. The Hell-Hounds. Watson managed to select two demonic beings cunningly disguised as puppies to pour onto our bed in the middle of the night on Christmas morning. We did not at first discern the diabolical glint in their eyes, or we might, as she feared, have returned them to the shelter on Boxing Day.

On balance, however, that would have been a grave mistake.

We’d have missed seeing the only full-throated, indeed full- _body_ laugh documentably attributable to Mycroft Holmes, when he saw my reaction to what Mephistopheles and Asmodeus had done to—with— _on_ my cherished blankets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t come at me about Mephistopheles and Asmodeus. They are not permanent; it took some time before the puppies revealed their true names.


	8. Chapter 8

**2019**

I begged him to stop calling it _Murder Month_. There was no way Rosie was going to miss hearing _that_ , if he let it slip, and then the thin membrane between The Work and our daughter would entirely dissolve.

He scoffed, of course. Snorted, even. “An indiscretion? _Me_? Oh, please, John.”

As years passed without a slip-up, I started to relax. A bit. Rosie knew we had a job that entailed stopping bad guys, and she knew we were sometimes in the press. Her school friends knew who we were, but a couple of kids in her class had _really_ famous parents, so we hardly stood out for that.

But the awful cases—the crimes against children, the crimes against humanity, the murders so brutal they made even Sherlock go still—those, we kept on the other side of that membrane. Impermeable, we thought, until the day it wasn’t, the year Rosie turned twelve. But in her babyhood, her little-girlhood, we mostly succeeded in preserving her innocence about all that.

Though it sometimes required some fancy footwork. The morning after we got married, for example, I was plucked out of bed (after a _memorable_ wedding night, might I add) by an imperious “John. It’s _at least an eight_.”

And the game was on. We delivered Rosie to school (I always say Sherlock threw her out of a moving vehicle, and I can’t swear he actually slowed to a complete stop) and arranged for Clara to collect her, and keep her for the night. From that moment it was as though _we’d_ been flung out of a moving vehicle, or into a tumbler dryer, as we never stopped for almost 80 hours, calling every day to prolong Rosie’s stay with her aunts.

Our cover story was that we were arranging a special surprise at 221B. Which put us in the position of having to beg Mycroft to set up a special surprise there which we weren’t even privy to.

His text—“Leave it to me. The little general will be delighted, I assure you”—I did not find entirely reassuring. But needs must, when the devil drives.

Fully three days later—Friday afternoon—we spun to a stop, took a look at each other and our watches, blurted “Rosie!” and “Watson!” in unison, and raced for Baker Street. I was covered in blood, fortunately not mine. Still, I didn’t want Rosie to see it, or even smell it.

We pelted into the house and pounded up the stairs. I raced for the shower since she was due back home in about 7 minutes. I shoved my fouled clothing into a bin bag for the moment and sagged in the luxuriously hot shower, watching what blood was on my skin swirl down the drain.

I pulled on my towel robe and headed for the sitting room to find Sherlock staring transfixed at Mycroft’s surprise: gorgeous, gigantic, glittering, all gold on green, illuminated only by the twinkle lights that also festooned the mirror and lined the walls at ceiling height.

When we heard Rosie and Clara coming upstairs, he shook himself out of his trance to pick up the violin. And just as though this magical reveal had been his plan all along, he laid his bow to the strings to play “O Christmas Tree.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You knew Murder Month was going to intersect productively with Christmas sooner or later!


	9. Chapter 9

**2030**

When John moved Watson into 221B she was a baby, thirteen months old and none too fussy about routines or caregivers. I could’ve gotten away with any amount of approximate parenting, missed any number of commitments, and Watson would have stayed cheerful and John mostly patient, until he became resigned.

But I didn’t want that.

I wanted better for him, and better for her. I’d promised to put her first—well, you have to, with an infant, there’s no other option. And to him, I’d promised much more than I’d ever spoken aloud. My days as a solitary, self-appointed dragon-slayer had ended rather hideously, and I was never again going to exclude John “for his own safety” and hurt him the way I had done.

I’d suspected it would be hard to change my habits. It wasn’t, even if sometimes I had to set my alarm for a Watson pick up or appointment. Because it wasn’t just my habits I was changing, it was my priorities. I _wanted_ to give her a regular schedule, not tuck her in around the edges of whatever case we were working. She was more important than any case, and so was her father.

Every day at three, or a little later depending on the season, we would put Watson in her cot for an hour. Consistency and structure are essential for giving a child a sense that the world is orderly and (I hate this word) _safe._ We’d tried to balance those with spontaneity and the cheerful brand of chaos that's always inspired Watson’s creativity.

Happily the afternoon nap regimen gave us a chance to inspire her father’s (her fathers’) creativity as well. Having only an hour focused our attention wonderfully, and it kept the two of us as a dyad front and center.

For years our daily hour was sacrosanct. Even once Watson no longer napped, by mutual consent we prolonged the ritual for about 12 years longer than we’d have had any right to hope.

There was never any explicit discussion of what we or she did in our quiet hour. Sometimes we could hear her playing music, or listening to it; sometimes she read quietly; as she grew, she might be gaming or writing or talking with her friends. Doing lessons, composing, or scheming. Best not inquire too closely: anyone who wants privacy must be prepared to extend it.

It was our earnest hope that she never heard us doing anything at all. (There are minefields for fathers raising a very intelligent daughter, areas where we had to bring in the aunts, grandmothers, or godmothers.) One mortifying eruption into our bedroom when she was fifteen turned us to stone and Watson's face to a crimson mask of horror.

That Christmas she surprised us with a gift so uncharacteristic that it can only have been suggested to her by her latest heart-throb, a girl this time. Katie’s shamelessly explicit sense of humour was both disconcerting and winning, and I could easily imagine the scene when the girls picked out what we were busy unwrapping on Christmas Eve.

“Don’t be burning them at both ends, now, dads,” said Watson, giggling. She went bright pink when she realised her semi-innuendo, and we burst out laughing too when we pulled out the anatomically correct, luridly coloured, and (as to size) rather _ambitious_ pair of candles.


	10. Chapter 10

**2036**

When I was little, we had a sacrosanct ritual for Christmas presents: one on Christmas Eve; stockings on Christmas morning; and one tiny present one each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. And when I say tiny--it could be a pencil sharpener or a glitter-glue pen. Unbeknownst to my younger self, Ba in particular waged guerilla warfare against the aunts and grandparents, to keep them from spoiling me and Christmas with gift inflation.

To this day I think Christmas presents are maddening, and _too much_ , and I'm glad we went through my childhood with just the stockings. But since I've only three days in London this year, we'll gather everyone together on Christmas Eve and open gifts like normal people.

I’ve been collecting treasures throughout the year, here and there across Italy, but there's always something missing, someone I can't work out a gift for, something I can only get at home.

Ba:

CD of baroque violinist (damn, what’s her name again)

new Mancinelli tome on the forensics of art theft and art forgery (not exactly bestseller material)

merino socks, in colours Jeeves would emphatically not approve

framed drawing of Da

that poncy coffee from Rome he’s always on about

Da:

framed drawing of Ba

 _Diabolik_ (deluxe edition)

merino jumper, matches his eyes

gunpowder tea from F&M (that’s really for Ba, I suppose) (I can hardly wrap up P.G. Tips for Da)

scalp massager (well, that’s really for Ba too) (Ba’s way easier to give gifts to) (Da never seems to think he deserves them)

Harry:

new LP CD (or else classic k.d. lang?)

antique frame with tintype

Clara:

vintage handwoven linen tablecloth

gift cert. for ice skating date since Aunt Harry won't take her

Uncle My: just one thing, but it had to be perfect

leather-bound blank book with handmade paper, must open properly flat for writing in (if he doesn't like it I'll give him a £2 umbrella and beat him about the head and shoulders with it) (FOUR VISITS I made to that bookbinder’s workshop)

Gran:

framed photo of all of us

weirdly clever and essential kitchen implement that at first glance looks like a sex toy

Grandad:

Italian mushrooming knife

carpenter’s apron

Molly:

vintage rhinestone choker (she'll be delighted it cost ten times less than a new one)

Uncle Greg:

coupon for a tattoo at Camden Market (can't wait to see the look on his face) (he'll get one, too) (wouldn't dare not) (but what and _where_ )

Uncle Robbie:

??? damn it ???

Aunt Vally:

cycling gloves? Hers looked ratty last time we went out together

Sami:

new Nothomb novel?

Maureen: oh fuck it I've no idea

Little Jamie: even less idea

Oh God I give up. I don’t mind finding out who’s naughty or nice. I don’t even mind checking twice. But dear God, how I hate _making a sodding list_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a bookend in ch. 18.
> 
> Anyone else become weirdly rattled by obligatory gift-giving, but happily inspired by non-obligatory gift-giving?


	11. Chapter 11

**2034**

After a challenging start in life, my brother has had an easier—well, almost two decades now.

There had been years on end when I felt he had put the reins of his life into my hands so that he could resent me for it, and rebel, and drench every word he spoke to me with caustic loathing. By the time John Watson limped into our lives I was depleted, and almost without hope that Sherlock would ever get a handle on his own reins. —Not a terribly successful metaphor, I admit. But Sherlock as both horse and rider does at least hint at how he was both the author and the victim of his own intense emotions, and his failure to control them.

Control: that’s all I ever wanted for him. When I shorthanded that into “caring is not an advantage,” I never meant for him to understand “you should not love anyone.”

If I’d meant that, I wouldn’t have cared so much for _him_. And I did. I do.

Sherlock has an undeniably powerful intellect, but his brain chemistry was on such a collision course with his heart—about which much _can_ be deduced—that I knew it would take an earthquake to suspend that conflict. I didn’t know, and could never have posited, that the earthquake would take the form of a worn, wary, nearly hopeless army surgeon who’d been denied both these dimensions of his vocation. Of his identity.

The rest is history. John Watson and the little general have been the making of Sherlock, and the foundation of a community that comes very close to being a family. Certainly the three of them have expanded my own circle of people I must at all costs keep safe, on the grounds that they are too dear to lose.

Some have been lost already, sadly. Mike Stamford, gone before his time in the pandemic of 2020. Mrs Hudson, at least a timely loss. Our own parents gradually failing, probably on their last visit to warmer climes in winter. It all brought me and my brother a bit closer, despite still sniping and bickering.

That Rosamund couldn’t come home for Christmas in the massive snowstorm of 2034 left us feeling quite bleak. We’d not faced the holidays without her since 2016. But she’d left her travel until Christmas Eve, and no flights were leaving any Italian airport she could reach, so it would be just Sherlock, John, and me at our parents’ home in the country. The snow immobilising Italy was soon to reach us as well.

He and John had packed up the hellhounds—lanky young adults now—and taken the back roads, to let them run off lead here and there. They were excellently behaved dogs, which was Sherlock’s doing. After the Great Blanket Massacre, he took them to the canine equivalent of military academy and kept them in training until they were more or less bombproof.

They were virtually working dogs, without a specific job to do. They were at attention until explicitly released. They were under perfect voice control, and they never barked, jumped up, or chewed anything at all. They looked like nothing so much as bodyguards, and I was certain that such costly training had never before been lavished on mongrels.

Shrewdly, Sherlock had leased a Land Rover. By the time they were ten miles away snow was already accumulating; fortunately he is an excellent driver in inclement weather, a skill I have not bothered to cultivate. (Have not had to cultivate.) I kept an eye out, and when John texted that they were coming up the drive I reluctantly pulled on wellies ( _only in the country_ ) and a heavy coat and went to welcome them.

That courteous gesture was its own reward, as the dogs put on a show that made me laugh harder than I'd laughed all year.

The Rover pulled up by the kitchen door, and John got out and opened the door for the hellhounds. He signaled that they could get out and run, but the hounds had never seen snow, and they exited apprehensively. One wary, one curious, they thrust snouts into four inches of snow and tossed it in the air. They seemed at a loss to connect the different texture of the ground and the white flakes falling on their thick coats.

But as they explored this new environment they began to look less like serious, nearly adult dogs and more like giddy adolescents with energy to run off. The hellhounds chased each other, throwing up curtains of snow as they pivoted sharply at high speed, and churning the smooth rolled fondant of white that covered the yard into a messy froth. Unrestrained, they gave themselves over exuberantly to dashing through the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always wonder what it's like to be in Mycroft's head, and how to account for the things he's done for and to Sherlock--in canon, and in my own imagination.


	12. Chapter 12

**2034**

Sherlock’s parents left their home looking appropriately festive before they left for Florida. I’m sure they were delighted to be there in the warmth; the snow was unpleasant to navigate, and the house a challenge to heat once the power went out.

But there were fireplaces, and candles, and 15-year-old single malt, and two Holmes brothers in a mellow mood. They were entertaining, without any of the acerbity or rivalry that usually edged in even on a Christmas Eve.

I was more melancholy than mellow. A Christmas without Rosie—well, she was a student at uni now, so it was likely to happen more and more often. She called us from Zanardi’s place, of all things. I was glad he was in town to host her, of course. We chatted, a bit disconsolately on my end at least, and rang off.

“Goodnight, Da. Goodnight, Ba. I’m sorry I’m not there. I cut it too fine this time. Won’t make that mistake again.”

“Good, darling. We miss you. Say hello to—the Zanardis for us.”

“Miss you too. They say Happy Christmas as well. You should see the snow they’ve got here!”

“It might get to a foot here. You’d love it.”

“Oh, I wish. At least the dogs are there to discover it.”

The dogs were very obviously her idea of a replacement and a distraction for us. As puppies they fulfilled all the meanings of the word “distraction” (as in “driving me to”). We had squabbled over their sleeping protocols, until the day they shredded Sherlock’s precious blankets. After that they slept in the sitting room.

By the time Christmas rolled around again they were well trained. Disciplined when they had to be, exuberant when they were allowed to be, company for each other when we were busy—good fun all around.

We’d given some thought to retirement; the countryside would certainly be better for the dogs than London. This house might be a good choice one day. Had it come to that, though? Were we the aging couple gradually becoming marginal to their child’s life, and arranging their own for the convenience of their pets?

I hoped not.

We turned in early, a bit disconcerted by it all. Until Sherlock turned on the music low and undressed me to the lilt of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” And indeed, with him beside me, “what did I care, how much it may storm?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh golly, a little melancholy. Well, that creeps in at the holidays too, I guess. Fortunately the rest of the series is cheery ... mostly. ❤️


	13. Chapter 13

**2034**

Some years ago, in 2034, Sherlock’s daughter was stranded in Rome on Christmas Eve, when all the flights out of central and northern Italy were canceled.

Rosie had three choices: a dreary hotel room near Roma Termini; an effortful and fruitless attempt to make it back to Salerno by train; or a more human welcome in Rome at Christmas, with her father’s old friend. (She seems to know me as no more than that, though she’s taken to calling me _Uncle Robbie._ )

Happily she chose the third option. She’s a conversable, energetic little person, who seems to emit warmth like a woodstove in winter. Her Italian is perfect, of course, and I knew she’d add sunny cheer to the Christmas Day visits of my own children and grandchildren. Valentina was fond of Rosie, despite having met her only after she began studying in Salerno; I of course had known her already as a pre-adolescent.

I offered to pick her up at the station. The streets were disastrous, though, and I was relieved when she insisted on taking a taxi. The vehicle that deposited her at the flat with a pair of surprisingly heavy suitcases looked more like an armoured personnel carrier than an urban cab.

Rosie’d been to the flat before, several times, but for some reason this arrival brought memories flooding back of Sherlock’s arrival in 2016. I couldn’t have said why; I still can’t.

Just: his daughter. An evening of heightened emotional intensity. Her rediscovery of the rooftop terrace, looking like a country field blanketed in ten inches of undisturbed snow, mounded here and there over planters and outdoor furniture I should have stowed for the winter.

 _How_ I remembered. Sherlock wanting to sleep up there, and my heavy disappointment. Sherlock wandering through the flat that first morning swathed in a sheet. Sherlock hanging his heavy winter coat by the door just as Rosie’s, damp and wool-scented, hung there that Christmas Eve.

I’d hoped for so much. And this lovely, smiling creature represented unaware the life that my hopes—had they been fulfilled—would have prevented. Sherlock’s life with John, their work together. Mine with Valentina, and our work together. I couldn’t regret the present, but that didn’t keep the life I'd wanted with Sherlock from aching that night like a phantom limb.

It’d taken me years after Sherlock left me to come back to life, under Valentina’s gentle impetus. He'd left my heart a torched wasteland, no use to anyone else. It wasn’t until I met Rosie that I realised how thoroughly he’d moved on, _life_ had moved on, and it was time for me to move on as well.

I made myself remember that the life I had, the life I have, is a known quantity, and the one I would have had with Sherlock is an imaginary perfection. For all I know, it could have been a misery; we’re neither of us easy men, after all. But I had wanted it, so badly.

The three of us shared a quiet dinner, talking and laughing. Afterwards Rosie slipped away upstairs for a few minutes to talk with her fathers in England, while Vally and I finished the washing up. I went to the piano and played a Christmas carol; after a moment Rosie and Vally joined in, singing. It’s how we spent the rest of Christmas Eve: carols, private reminiscence, and visiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some readers of _Drawn to Stars_ hoped that Roberto had a happy outcome. This one is for them. Roberto returns in the next sequel, and we’ll learn how he came to meet Rosie.
> 
> There's a whisper of a Brassens song, "Une jolie fleur," where he writes, "mon coeur lui pardonne / d'avoir mis mon coeur à feu et à sang / pour qu'il ne puisse plus servir à personne" (My heart forgives her / for having set it to burning and bleeding so that it would be of no further use to anyone).


	14. Chapter 14

**2030**

Once I used to cross my fingers for a chance to touch him, casually. Faux casually. If he needed stitches, it might be. Or restraint. Or a vigorous throttling. I’d keep my eyes open for any chance to make him touch me, too. To shift me out of the way, or once, nightmarish memory, to reach into my coat to pull out my gun.

Even through his clothing it thrilled me to touch him. To feel those muscled contours through layers of fabric. They say that, don’t they—that a barrier is more erotic than accessible, bare skin.

It could shake the breath from my lungs to feel Sherlock crowd into my space, push me or tug me. I was always sure he was going to work out how much I wanted it and either mock or manipulate me on the strength of my desire to touch him.

That was then.

Now I sleep with him, and some nights I honestly think I don’t sleep at all, just stay half-awake and feel him. When we’re in bed we’re always tangled up, and my skin knows every surface and texture of his. Knows when he’s running even a low fever. When he’s a bit dehydrated. When he’s relaxed and happy.

I lie there some nights and let my fingertips trace over every part of him I can reach, or fondle without waking him. My hands in his hair glide down to trace the complex patterns of ribbons scarring his back. I splay a hand over his lean quadriceps and curve it over kneecap and ankle bone. I rest a hand lightly over his cock while he sleeps, as though he needed my hand there to defend him.

No longer is the barrier more alluring than bare skin. Pressing against him is insanely arousing, even after all this time. Knowing him intimately it affects me more and more, whereas I’d thought it would diminish and eventually deaden the wonder of him.

It’s better, in every way, than I could ever have imagined back when touching Sherlock was nothing more than an elusive and secretive and shamefaced hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long ago, Sherlock worried that the fireworks of love would fade when it no longer had an obstacle. John has an answer. 🎇🎆


	15. Chapter 15

**2029**

What ever was Mummy thinking, I sometimes wonder. Pushing a little boy with auditory hypersensitivity to play an instrument that is notoriously grating, and loud, and played _right next to the ear_. I used to have meltdowns over the way it scraped the inside of my skull, before I learned to control the timbre a bit.

But I loved the voice of the violin, and eventually I learned to plug my ears with cotton wool to muffle the stridency until I played well enough to give myself more pleasure than torture. To this day I retain exaggeratedly sensitive hearing, though.

There they are now, John and Watson, whispering on the sofa while I play the unfamiliar Christmas songs that haven’t been rubbed thin by overexposure, at least not in the U.K.

“Las Posadas.” “Quanno nascette ninno.” “El Cant dels ocells.” "Ecce quod natura." When a melodic line is captivating, no accompanying instrument or voice is needed. But the beloved voices across the room filter through.

“I love that one.”

“Me, too. It’s Sicilian.”

“He does go far afield to find songs he likes, doesn’t he.”

“And to avoid songs he doesn’t. Remember Lestrade last year, asking him to play ‘The Little Drummer Boy.’” They giggle, conspiratorially.

I slip a musical phrase from that hated warhorse into "Quanno nascette"; sure enough, they don’t notice, but go on whispering.

“You know Uncle Greg was joking.”

“Well, he wasn’t smiling.”

“He never does. And Ba _certainly_ wasn’t smiling.”

 _“He_ never does either. Not while he’s playing. I used to think he didn’t even like it, with that frown between his eyes. Thought he just did it because it looked and sounded so cool.”

John is trying much less hard to keep his voice down, so I stop pretending I don’t hear him, and turn and smile.

The smile he gives me back is breathtaking; my bow hovers a moment and into the silence Watson teases, “Ba, play that song that goes “‘Holly Jolly?’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously. How did it come about, that Sherlock plays the violin of all things? (Yes, obviously it’s canon.)


	16. Chapter 16

**2031**

My family isn't ordinary, and we take pride in it. We’re probably insufferable. Our Christmas tree is a family portrait where we expose our oddities in full view and almost no one notices. Because as Ba never fails to say: they see, but they do not observe.

The lifelike felted mushroom ornament: amanita muscaria, or fly agaric. Send you to Aunt Molly in short order, that will. Or into hallucinations, whichever comes first.

The various skull-themed ornaments: not El Día de los Muertos, just Ba’s favourite decorative element. Someday he'll cover the iris wallpaper with a pattern of stylised skulls.

There’s a literal bullet dangling innocuously from a thin gold cord, and I’m to understand it’s in honour of both my fathers’ scars. To me it just looks like an homage to their—our—weirdly casual attitude toward carnage.

One year we made each other ornaments for our stocking presents. I was little, so mine were clumsy and flimsy, but my dads hung them front and center, and faithfully reinforce them every year. For Da, an anatomical drawing cut-out of the shoulder muscles, framed in red ribbon. For Ba, of the inferior vena cava, framed in black ribbon.

Of course there are more innocuous decorations, a sketchy little wooden violin, a crystal cadeuceus, a few stars and other celestial bodies. But anyone who really looks can see the mediaeval representation of a scorpion, another of a snake—you know, the classic friendly beasts at any nativity scene.

A Chinese New Year image of a rat (Ba’s nod to bubonic plague, the old ghoul). A miniature harpoon made from fishhooks and a chopstick. A tiny pistol dangling from an incongruous sparkling green chain. And a dozen others that we greet every year like old friends when we unpack them.

New boyfriends or girlfriends are run past the Christmas tree to see if they pass muster. If they don’t notice, they might be nice but they can’t be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

If they notice and they’re bothered, or too polite to let on, then they’re never going to fit in.

If they notice and go, “Cool,” the dads perk up and give them the tour of the tree. It’s us they’re introducing, it's our story they're telling as they pull out the gruesome bits camouflaged by fairy lights gaily twinkling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You just knew their tree wasn't going to be matchy-matchy, or tasteful, or _ordinary_ , right?
> 
> Dec. 16th is the day John and Sherlock got married, in this series. _Teach Your Children Well_ tells that story from John’s POV, and _The Nearer Your Destination_ from Sherlock’s.


	17. Chapter 17

**2021**

“Hand me the scissors and tape? And turn down that bleeding carol, will you? I can’t hear myself think.”

“Yes, _sir,_ Captain Watson.”

“So who or what are these merry gentlemen, anyway?”

“What?”

“In ‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen.’”

“Isn’t it ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen?’”

“Well, I don’t know, do I? Either way, it’s dodgy.”

“Dodgy? How, pray tell?”

“Well, what’s your take on ‘merry,’ for example?”

“Cheerful? Lighthearted? Gay?”

“Gay. Exactly.”

“So you think the carol is telling us to stay gay. Intriguing hypothesis.”

“Well, it’s telling _you_ to stay gay.”

“Oh, right, because it certainly couldn’t be talking to you. Despite the fact that you’re married to me, and I am—when last I checked—a man.”

“Of course not, I’m not gay.”

“Oh, for—I don’t think gay meant the same thing back then, and anyway the text says merry.”

“Yes, but maybe _merry_ had the same connotations as gay, nudge-nudge-wink-wink.”

“John, is this your way of taking issue with my choice of wrapping paper colours?”

“Who, me? I would never.”

“Never what?”

“Wrap presents in those totally gay colours.”

“Yes, well, we all know that for you _any_ colours are gay. Only oatmeal, blue, black, and the whole rich colour palette of brown are suitable for a ... Oh, never mind.”

“Don’t be cross. You know I love how you’ve put colour in my life. _God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think this John Watson doesn’t know every line of every Monty Python skit ever filmed then you may, as they say over on Tumblr, “fight me.”
> 
> For the record, I deplore the remaining shreds of casual idiocy clinging to our John. Growing up takes more time than we usually acknowledge.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the bookend to Ch. 9. AlwaysJohn gave me the idea of making it a letter.

**2034**

My dear Rosamund,

I have received your marvelous Christmas gift, chosen—no, commissioned—with your habitual taste and attention to every detail. The paper, if I do not err, is made in the ancient artisanal fashion—from rags. The endpapers are a glory, with the marbling that must never be called Florentine. The leather binding is soft as butter and the colour of honey. The stamped ornamentation on the covers is as elegant as it is precise, and I surmise (and approve) that you forbade the bookbinder to pick them out in the too-frequent gold leaf. That was customary at one time, but now it is merely ostentatious.

But the volume’s true excellence lies in how it is bound, allowing me to open it flat and write comfortably and clearly. I must update my journal daily, as it is a vital source for my private history of this nation’s travails since 1998; without it, I could not be certain of being either comprehensive or accurate. I am confident, since I write in a triple code which only I can read (though perhaps Sherlock could, if he bothered to try), that the information I commit to writing is safe. This gift of yours will be a precious part of my project, and I thank you for it.

Your fathers and I were sorry to celebrate Christmas without you this year. Since your grandparents were in Florida, the three of us were alone in the country house—well, along with two hellhounds, a foot of snow, and no electricity. Happily we had made no more ambitious plans for the holiday, as the snow would undoubtedly have put paid to them. The highlight of the weekend may well have been watching the hounds encounter the unfamiliar snowscape; they were suspicious, then bemused, and finally quite frantic with delight. I haven’t laughed so much since the time Sherlock ... well, I should save that anecdote for live delivery.

We did have a very pleasant three days, with Sherlock doing the cooking and John keeping the fires burning. (I may never get the smell of woodsmoke out of my favourite tweed jacket now, and I have left it in the country.) I merely contributed some bickering, a few childhood memories John had not yet heard, and the occasional intervention to preserve “order” in some hard-pressed part of the world. My retirement is proving very difficult to preserve; I appear to figure as the mandarin on call to the current generation of functionaries. I was, nonetheless, able to write quite a few pages on my History, to complete the notoriously difficult year 2020.

I hear that your own work is going well, dear niece. You did well to settle on Salerno for your medical studies; I imagine that living in Italian, in Italy, is sparing you any boredom that might creep in whenever your first-year courses repeat what you already learned at your father’s knee. Your fathers’ knees. As you progress, of course, this will change; so much advanced research and instruction in the sciences is conducted in English. I assume that your History of Medicine course allows you to apply your Latin, and introduces you to at least the rudiments of Arabic. Salerno was the premier medical school in the West a dozen centuries ago, and I was pleased when it was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status. That honour has been sadly cheapened in recent years, of course; next they will be naming 221B Baker Street a World Heritage Site.

Baronissi must be a great deal less culturally vibrant than London, but for your first years in medicine, having fewer distractions can only be an advantage. Not that you are easily distracted from what you decide to pursue. I remember the first time you watched your father operate from the observation deck; at dinner that evening you announced that you were going to be a surgeon, like him. A perfect match for your own constellation of abilities and interests, whether you pursue principally surgery or also research.

Alas, I see that I am summoned again to be a mandarin. Sorry to sign off in haste. Take good care of yourself, my dear. Let me know if you need anything—anything at all.

With love,

Uncle Mycroft

P.S. Thank you again for my book. As it and the hellhounds prove, you have a truly exceptional knack for giving gifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft’s confidence that his journal cannot be read is very reasonable, since he writes in a language he has invented and then encodes it twice. He based it on an arcane ancient Near Eastern language and integrated elements at which he has hinted in his letter. Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks spurred him to outdo that genius.
> 
> Bombastic? Paternalistic? Benevolent? That’s our boy. But appreciative, too: Rosie won’t have to beat him about the head and shoulders with a cheap umbrella, at least. And verbose? His History is going to make Edward Gibbon look laconic.


	19. Chapter 19

**2013**

I have tried to hold on to faith.

I know the Gospel definition: "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." On the surface I understand the words, but their meaning slips through my fingers.

Mine was never a theological faith, in any case. I placed my faith in reason; in empirical science; in a rule-governed universe. Never in a god, and only occasionally, and selectively, in a human being.

Now even that faith may have trickled away; hope definitely has. I am tired, so tired.

It was a leap of faith, off the roof of Barts. Faith that my brother’s arrangements would work, and that I would survive. Faith that Moriarty’s snipers would back off, and that John would not be close enough to see the trick at work.

It was a matter of faith that I could liquidate the Moriarty crime cartel in the following months. Those months became a year, then two, and here I am, still dead—to John, and nearly to myself, in sober truth.

It was a test of faith, to stay away from John for so long, for his survival—a test that he would keep the faith, that he had faith in me. But how could he, when I made sure he would firmly believe me dead? He could have no faith that I would return; he will have rebuilt his life on other foundations, and no longer even welcome my return. Let alone rejoice.

It has been the eclipse of faith, this endless, solitary, uphill work. I no longer believe I can achieve it at all or that I can ever go home and take up my life again. What I’ve experienced physically, mentally, emotionally, has disintegrated faith, and in doing so has fractured what spurred me to vanquish the dead Moriarty in the first place.

It is the end of faith, to be tortured within a hair’s breadth of my breaking point. I am ready to say anything to make it stop. Anything.

Until I hear my brother’s voice, encouraging my torturer. It could be an auditory hallucination, born of unendurable and recurring pain. But I know those tones, and I can detect that accent even in a language I've never heard him speak.

If it is not a hallucination, then it is an instruction, an exhortation: _do not give in. I am here. It will end. Have faith._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may actually never get over the Hiatus and its aftermath. It casts a long shadow over the later, happier lives of both principals.


	20. Christmas Waltz

**2014**

No, come in, dear, come in, sit down, I’m glad you’re here. Heaven knows it’s been a horrid time, and I was just sitting here thinking how quickly it all went wrong. Well, just before Christmas everything was looking so promising, Sherlock was recovering so well with John back, and Baker Street felt like home again. It looked like it was going to be the best Christmas in years.

There was this street musician, always there when John got home after six. He was tall, an older man, a bit stooped, with a great hammered dulcimer he’d set up on a portable stand next to Speedy's. I'd watch him from my window, and I saw John stop and stand each time to hear the last piece or two the man would play.

He made a beautiful sound like glass, in those cold early winter nights, and he always had a few people gathered around him. I never heard him play even one of the twee or commercial or hoary old seasonal “favourites” that get so _very_ annoying by the time Christmas finally arrives.

Every time, John would listen until the man began to pack up. He could never actually play all that long—the weather, you know, and though it wasn’t raining that week, that meant _cold_ , didn’t it, a clear night is always a freezing one in that season. But as long as the man was there John listened, and I did too, from my warm flat.

When the man’s half-fingered woolen gloves couldn’t keep his hands warm enough to hit the strings right with his little hammers, he’d take out a pair of proper gloves and play one last tune before he packed up. Always the same tune, a pretty little waltz I’d never heard before. So John heard it a few times, and apparently so did Sherlock.

It was round the solstice, just before Christmas. And I realized I'd completely forgotten to get the shopping in. Nowadays you _can_ find a shop open once the holiday begins, but there’s something so nice about not having to—and when I came back from Bristol on Boxing Day it would be lovely to find some provisions already in.

So I left for the shops a bit early, and the dulcimer-man was just starting up when I set off for Tesco. And who did I meet but John, who must have had the same thought. It was nice and friendly, filling our baskets together, and I remember thinking again how lucky I was, with the boys living upstairs. A bit of family and a bit of adventure in the same package, really. And not too much of either—well, I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime, haven’t I.

As we were walking home John gave me his arm. It was snowing by then, it had warmed up enough to snow, and the dulcimer-man had set up his instrument under the café awning for shelter. As we got closer we heard him singing, a really lovely baritone he had, and then he stopped and put on his gloves and chimed out the opening notes of that little waltz he always ended with.

We stopped to listen. All at once John took the carrier bags out of my hands and put them on the ground beside his, and he smiled at me and raised his eyebrows, holding out his arms. I couldn’t resist. It was so cold, and a _little_ slick underfoot, but the waltz melody was irresistible, simple and old-fashioned and just the right tempo for a whirl round the street with John.

He was smiling as we danced, and I wondered if he was thinking of dancing with Mary at their wedding, to that strange and mournful waltz Sherlock had written for them. But I don’t think he was: his face was open and happy, just John being John, you know. Kind and fond, the way he is. And he held me firmly so I wouldn’t slip.

I didn’t really notice the violin at first. But then there it was, a low hum beneath the dulcimer, then all at once taking up the melody so strongly and sweetly that the dulcimer-man started playing a harmony instead. It made the waltz even prettier, with the the long rich lines of the violin like a velvet ribbon, and the bright notes of the dulcimer like ice crystals.

Of course it was Sherlock. John and I stopped to look up at 221B and there he was, he’d opened the window and was playing along with the dulcimer man. He wasn’t smiling, he doesn’t smile very much at the best of times and never when he plays, but he waved his bow a little irritably to tell us to dance again. We did, and the snowflakes came down and the notes rose up, and for John and me it was Christmas.

It wasn’t but a few days later that John left Baker Street and went back to Mary. And since then, from upstairs it's been all silence, and darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course there’s a real Christmas waltz--composed and played by John McCutcheon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0AeCdEbZhE
> 
> This is the only one of these snippets not written expressly for this challenge, though it was written for Drawn to Stars. I'm posting it today to put it next to Ch. 19 (2013), so the rest of the Advent calendar can be uninterrupted cheer.


	21. Chapter 21

**2040**

We always knew the day would come when Rosie would hit a rough patch in adolescence and start longing for her mother (a mother, any mother) and tell us, especially Sherlock, that we were not an acceptable substitute. The inevitable blended-family drama that ends in someone shrieking “ _You’re not my real father!_ ” and slamming a door.

We’d braced ourselves, once she turned thirteen, and been determined that we wouldn’t take it personally, and we wouldn’t be unduly hurt. We swore we’d remember that the cocktail of hormones, physical and emotional maturation, and identity formation would make her say things she didn’t really mean.

But it didn’t happen. Rosie’s version of adolescent angst or rebellion was to spend more time in her room some weeks, and to write us very loving notes to ask us to leave her be. I remember Harry screaming “ ** _LEAVE ME ALONE_**!” and literally running away from home; Rosie just serenely asked, in writing, for some space. Sherlock shuddered at the memory of his own teenage years and said, “She’s too good to be true, John. This is making me nervous. It’s all going to come out at once, and she’ll get pregnant or something and _then_ run away from home.”

So we waited for the other shoe to drop, and we saved her little notes to get us over the hump when it came. Which it never did. Still, we stockpiled them in an old chocolate box just in case.

_“Ba, let’s not go skating today, I’ve got cramps, plus I want to do some writing. Don’t be sad, we’ll go another day. W”_

_“Dads, would you mind going to Aunt Molly’s party without me? I’ve made a game date with Holly and Zane. Not feeling very sociable anyway. Love you. R/W”_

_“I understand why you say we can’t have a dog just yet. But I’m still disappointed and I don’t want to come down for dinner and be jollied out of it. See you tomorrow. Love, sad dogless orphan”_

There were dozens of them, so sweet that even those evenings she withdrew didn’t sting. Somehow we'd managed to luck into an equable, thoughtful, and self-aware child who couldn’t be bothered to lash out, or to hurt herself or the people around her. Weird.

Rosie’s now well and truly out of adolescence, out of the danger zone, out of the house and out of the country. We aren’t suffering too much from empty nest syndrome, though; her plan with the hellhounds was really quite effective for getting us through the transition.

But every year since that first time she couldn’t make it home for Christmas, we have a habit—it may even be a ritual—in December. After the tree arrives and sometime before Rosie does, we settle in with a whisky and one of us says,

“Why don’t we open the box of sweets?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was struggling to write Rosie in a proper teenage strop, and I realized why: she’s low-drama. And I had more fun watching this ficlet unfold this way anyway. 
> 
> Thank you for the lovely comments—long or short, prose or emoji, I adore them all.


	22. Naming the hounds

**2034**

The puppies were a surprise gift from our daughter.

First, to be very clear: never give puppies as a gift to anyone, let alone a surprise gift.

Second: these puppies were the very definition of the perfect Christmas gift. Our daughter knows us all too well.

They were eight-week-old litter mates, closely bonded, and they reached us nameless. They were plump and fuzzy, various colours of brown, and so different in personality that we each of us bonded quickly with one of them. I invite no commentary on the fact that I adopted the flashy, bouncy one and Sherlock the smaller, quieter, vigilant one.

Not having had any notice of their arrival, we were caught wrong-footed on the question of names. We tried on dozens of them, but each name we tried, the pups shrugged off after a couple of minutes.

They were going to be quite large dogs to judge by their paws, so tiny-cute-dog names were out. Sherlock assured me that to Optimise Canine Cognition (I heard the upper-case), ideal dog names are bisyllabic and emphasised on the first syllable, with the second syllable something like –y or –er.

We weren’t getting anywhere on our own, so we asked around for inspiration. The results:

Mycroft: _They are Hellhounds. I suggest Mephistopheles and Asmodeus._ [No. No poncy polysyllables to shout across Regents Park.]

Lestrade: _One and Two._ [an utter non-starter]

Mummy Holmes: _They’re brother and sister, and they’ve no scruples to speak of: Cesare and Lucrezia._ [Another thing I won’t be shouting across Regents Park, thank you very much.]

Daddy Holmes: _I don’t know. Flanders and Swann? Fry and Laurie? Oh, all right. The little one has quite the paunch on him, and the big one’s getting lanky. Sancho Panza and Don Quixote?_ [How on earth did I marry into this lot?]

Molly: _They’re both criminals. Bonnie and Clyde?_ [Getting warmer.]

Harry: _Monty Python and the Holy Grail._ [VERY tempting. Monty and Holly?]

Clara: _Freddy and Elton._ [Kind of winning, but no.]

Sherlock: _Sacco and Vanzetti._ [Not funny, Sherlock.]

Rosie: _Do I have to do_ everything _in this family?_

It’s only ten days since they arrived and they’re already half again the size they were. We can’t still be calling them by pet names (ha!). Having a name to respond to is vital for training. The situation is becoming urgent.

 _Lizzie and Darcy?_ Over my dead body.

 _Abbie. Jenny. Maddy._ Absolutely not.

 _Tucker. Cooper. Riley._ Nope. A bit too—American.

But just today, as they chased each other around the sitting room, grinning (I swear, they _grin_ ) in malicious mischief, and eventually wore themselves out and flopped—the names appeared out of thin air. And settled on the dogs, who learned them quickly and accepted them without demur: Merry and Pippin. Again, no commentary invited on which is which.

This doesn’t mean the naming exercise was bootless. We only recognised their real names when the wrong ones had all been tried on (or rejected out of hand, if I’m honest). It was an exercise in building community. Our community has grown by two spirited if inarticulate creatures, and it only made sense to try to name them in consultation with friends and family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, Mycroft called them Asmodeus and Mephistopheles until the end of his days. Indiscriminately, of course. To him the Hellhounds were a unit.
> 
> Out of curiosity, which names would you recommend?
> 
> Thank you for the lovely comments. We're drawing toward the end of the calendar, but I'm going to add two or three extra ficlets, and conclude on Sherlock's birthday. I mean, Epiphany. Right. The Twelfth Day of Christmas.


	23. Looking back

**2040**

Our first meeting was magnetic: a convergence of rivers that had been on a collision course from the very start. But our convergence was no collision, because there was no damage. Waters flooding into waters, a mutual penetration that suffuses but does not harm.

We were also rock meeting rock. Each of us had jutting outcrops that would wear down under repeated contact. But mostly we were symbiotic balances, strengths evening out weaknesses, coming together with a click as audible as the latch of a door. And a faith in each other that never, or almost never, flagged.

John spent a couple of decades in a desultory yet sustained pursuit of love relationships—trying on potential girlfriends, tugging at himself to fit them, tweaking at them to fit him. He never did so with me. There wasn’t a trial period. There wasn’t even honestly much in the way of negotiation or adaptation. Manifestly unacceptable heads stopped manifesting in the fridge without much more than one initial explosion; we both knew whenever we reached a hard limit.

We just fit together. If you asked John he’d say there was no explaining it, it was beyond reason and beyond words.

For my part I would never agree that anything at all lay in such a place, or rather such a no-place, as “beyond reason.” Though I might agree it transcended articulation. When we met, both of us were in transition—a euphemism, in our case, for in crisis. Flailing, staggering, unmoored and unaware of how very close to the wind we were sailing. All of this is a lot of mixed metaphor for a man who privileges reason; but again, expressing such a conjunction is impossible without recourse to imagery.

What we were to each other was instantaneous and non-negotiable, but that didn’t keep it from also being painful, precarious, and at times utterly terrifying. How much misery did we inflict on ourselves and each other by trying to deny what was obvious to everyone in our orbit? Neither of us had the courage to risk losing any part of the other by caring _too much_ , by feeling the _wrong way_ , by offering and asking for the _wrong thing_. We didn’t have the courage to hope.

Strength can only get you so far. At a certain point you also have to accept to be vulnerable. Self-protection can only get you so far; at a certain point you also have to decide to risk. And pride can only get you so far; at a certain point you also have to resolve to be humble.

It isn’t that our planets finally aligned, or anything irrational like that; it’s that we finally worked up the nerve to risk a rebuff. I did it, in a letter of farewell; John, in a letter begging ( _admit it, John, you were begging_ ) for a chance. Another chance. Any chance to be more than best friends, a pallid descriptor for what we really were.

When there was no more to lose, that’s when we dared. Not exactly the height of courage or honesty. But it worked, despite or because of how long we delayed and disguised. What we won by risking was no less than everything.

_“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How clever of Miss Davis to make faith, hope, and love three of her prompts. In _The Nearer Your Destination_ , Sherlock had "the greatest of these is love" engraved in microscopic letters inside John's wedding ring. He's not religious, no, but he's known for having unpredictable islands of erudition; he must have needed Paul's first letter to the Corinthians for a case.
> 
> The last prompt of this Advent calendar will post on Christmas day, not the 24th. But if you haven't seen "Something red, something green, something sparkly," where Sherlock is desperate for inspiration for a gift for John, it's suitable Christmas Eve reading. Text fic, not too long, and -- well, sparkly.  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/27984534


	24. End of an era

**Blog post 25 December 2045**

Well, friends, it’s official: we’re finally retiring, for good, to our house on the Downs. (Sherlock calls it the cottage, but it’s too large to be a cottage. Perhaps I’m just accustomed to the modest dimensions of 221B Baker Street, but the house in Sussex seems _sprawling_ to me.)

We tried to make the transition as gradual as possible, bringing bits down with us from London over the past year or two, working when we could from the cottage ( _see? I’m trying!_ ), taking fewer cases. It’s been some time since I stopped operating, but we’ve been winding down the detective consultancy by raising the minimum interest factor. Now, it would take something like a 12 to get our professional attention (meaning that a prospective case must include three of these five: twins; aliens (provable); ghosts (ditto); newly discovered poisons or weapons; imminent danger to family or friends).

So yes, we tried for gradual, but it’s still a bit of a jolt to be leaving London to step into retirement. Sherlock has beehives ready to populate; his learner hives will now be his sole responsibility, though the chap who has tended them in our absence will still be available for occasional beesitting. I have a book project I’ve been planning for decades, and I’m finally ready to start. Though whether the world needs another book is an open question! We have an honestly terrifying number of them filling the built-in shelves, but the delight on Sherlock’s face whenever he steps into the library is worth being rated a South Downs A-1 fire hazard.

There is truly only one disadvantage to our move: it will be a bit harder for Rosie to get to us from Italy, and for us to get to her; London’s airports were convenient that way. Visits may be longer for that reason. It’s hard to believe that the UK was still firmly part of the EU when she was born! The post-Brexit years have been frankly bizarre; none of us know what will come of the new political configuration, which I for one did not see coming. We’ll have to reserve judgment, I suppose.

Thank you, readers—those of you who've been with us since 2010, and those who started following this blog in recent years, and everyone in between. You’ve been very patient with my fidelity to this obsolete technology; even though you are all capable of using the newest direct biotransmission, I have not felt inspired to face that learning curve. Making you a short video twice a year already strained my powers.

That’s all for 2045, then. This blog will only update once a month now, if that, and only with news of bees and writing, music and cooking, visits from family and friends, things like that. Or, if the spirit gets very busy and moves me inexorably, I might post a few old cases I never wrote up—particularly if any of the principals should helpfully die and remove the threat of a defamation lawsuit. (That was a joke. No need to school me on English libel laws in the comments box, thanks all the same.)

Sherlock and I, one darling daughter, and two mature and sedate Hellhounds wish you all good health, much happiness, and good fortune in the coming year. And a joyous day today, to all who celebrate: Merry Christmas!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be how the story almost ends, dear friends. There will still be three ficlets in this series, which will end on Sherlock's birthday. 
> 
> There will be another DtS story coming up in 2021, co-written with 7PercentSolution, in which Roberto Zanardi returns to work a case with Sherlock and we learn how he met Rosie. Meanwhile, I will be busy catching up with reading fic, which fortunately is a bottomless well daily replenished. 
> 
> MissDavis, thank you for your Advent Ficlet Challenge. It's a godsend. 
> 
> Thank you all so very much for reading along in the Drawn to Stars series, and for commenting, and for being the wonderful humans you are. I can honestly say, fandom is responsible for at least 68% of what sanity I have left after this difficult year. May 2021 be better for everyone, and for all who celebrate today: Merry Christmas.


	25. The year's best

**31 December 2016**

I’ve known from the very beginning that I’d never be bored living with Sherlock: he can always surprise me.

And now he's done it again. Apparently my partner, life partner, co-parent, and love of my life has yet another obsessive dislike that brings out the contemptuous loathing I’ve seen so little of lately. This is one I’d not noticed before. (Did we never spend enough late Decembers together?)

It started a few days ago, and at first it seemed a one-off. He gave an audible and derisive snort and binned _The Guardian_ with what seemed like unnecessary vigour. Asked to explain, he actually _growled_ , “Nothing.”

Nothing says _not-nothing_ like a growled “nothing,” you know? But he left the room before I could ask if he wanted to talk about it, and nothing about the front pages at least of the _Guardian_ was obviously worthy of the treatment he’d just given it.

A day or so later he slammed his laptop shut hard enough to make me fear for the machine’s working life. Shoved it under his chair and stomped upstairs, I suspect to avoid another question from me.

Then this morning, reading aloud to Rosie on his lap. He often reads her things she would never understand, but she loves to hear his voice echo in his chest under her ear (like father, like daughter) and she loves to be included in whatever has his attention. The syndrome is one I understand perfectly; though he doesn’t read me articles on advanced toxicology with my ear pressed to his torso, I almost wish he would.

Suddenly his soothing voice tightened into exasperation and he yipped a curse (yes, sorry to say so, but even Mister Mellifluous Baritone will occasionally yip) as he flung the magazine behind him, toward the window. (It collided with the Christmas tree, but happily no ornaments were harmed in the making of this petulant scene.)

Rosie was so startled she started to cry.

“Right. That’s it. If you aren’t going to tell me what’s got under your skin ever since Boxing Day, you don’t get to make me and Rosie nervous or miserable while you pout. Out with it.” I took her from his suddenly rigid arms and bounced her a bit, teased away her distress.

“It’s just _mindless_ , John. Every media outlet in existence feels the need to compile a _best of 2016_ list, of everything from films and books to adverts and songs and recipes and travel destinations and God knows what else, and it’s _maddening_ ” (he punctuated every indignant italic with a savage edge to his voice and spike in volume).

“A. Not new, Sherlock. B. Not harmful. C. Not important. Why do you care?”

“Because there’s nothing meaningful about the calendar year, it’s an arbitrary construct that does _not_ deserve to be reified into some magical entity worthy of navel-gazing and celebration.”

“But why do you care? Just skip those bits.”

I knew it wasn’t helping that I’d put on my “voice of sweet reason” timbre, it only ever exacerbated his annoyance. And—yes, there it was, I’d made it worse.

“ _Because_ , John, watching journalists imitate lemmings as they race to be first off the cliff is _infuriating_. Makes me want to move into a cave until mid-January.”

Rosie struggled to get back to Sherlock; she didn’t understand all this but she registered that he was cross, and she wanted to fix it. Strangely, her powerless desire to fix it was enough to ... fix it. He gave an embarrassed laugh and stroked her cheek with the back of one forefinger, which she promptly tried to put in her mouth. (A bit old for that, surely?)

“To you the calendar year may be an arbitrary construct, but to me? 2016 is the year I was the most wretched and the most ecstatic I’ve ever been in my life. And while I don’t give a toss about lists of its ten best films and whatnot, I am quite up for listing the best moments of 2016.”

He looked at me suspiciously but I wasn’t joking, and he saw that right away. To my relief, instead of pulling out his hair in exasperation, he gave a considering "hmmm." I went on.

“Come on, let’s make it a contest. Ten best moments of 2016, written down and ready to exchange tomorrow morning. If nothing else it’ll reconcile you to the apparently intolerable existence of end-of-year lists.”

More than once over the course of the day I caught him smiling at nothing, and I'm morally certain that he'll have a complete list ready for me in the morning.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet's companion piece will post tomorrow, and Sherlock will tell us his top ten. Put this under "accidentally tactless": on Tumblr I am _loving_ the various "year-in-review" posts, yet this ficlet seems to be dissing them. To be clear, I LOVE these lists in a fandom context ;)
> 
> Happy new year to all, whenever in the world you read this--a healthy and happy new year for everyone isn't that much to ask, surely? There must be a lot of good luck stored up in the cosmic warehouses that wasn’t used in 2020. May it be distributed lavishly now.


	26. Who's the fool now?

**1 January 2017**

There isn’t much John can’t reconcile me to, if he sets his mind to it. I already eat and sleep with metronomic regularity, and I no longer leave organic tissue in our refrigerator unless I mean to cook it. I am even civil to Mycroft in front of Watson.

So I shouldn’t be surprised that he got me to make an end-of-year list.

He witnessed my serial eruptions of annoyance at the vapid end-of-year lists that replace actual news and analysis in the media for the last week of the year. And in the spirit of placating my irrational irritation, John proposed that we exchange a list of our best moments of 2016.

I’ve spent the better part of a day, and all of last night, calling them to mind and crystalising them for the Mind Palace. I'm polishing them as I hold a sleeping John (I predict at least a 60% overlap with his list).

  * the moment I read his letter, in Roberto’s flat in Rome. All the pieces of my shattered heart that had been flung violently out into space came flying back into my body. I could actually feel my chest fill with it, though I was too numb to feel the happiness I knew would follow.



  * when I turned on my phone the same night, and found that he had texted me. Three times in as many minutes. At the literal end of my month-long experiment with another man, John broke radio silence to bring himself to my attention. (As though he weren’t in my thoughts, acknowledged or not, every moment.)



John sighs, and shifts. Buries his nose in my chest. Still sleeping soundly, though.

  * the moment I saw him in the Bologna train station and ran to hold him. John has the oddest effect on the physical universe. Everything converges around him, resizing itself to reflect his real dimensions, and my sprint up the escalator felt like a race to embrace a giant. Our first kiss.



  * the first time we made love, in Bologna. It was as heartrending as it was healing, and it was tentative and inexpert and very far from the heights we would reach and constantly surpass as we came to know each other as lovers. But it was undoubtedly the peak of emotional and erotic intensity in my life up to that point. I can still feel his heart thundering under my hand and it makes my own pulse quicken to remember it.



I shift to rest my palm on his chest, and remember the interlude in the middle of last night—we weren't fully awake, but that too added something.

  * the night John exploded because I had presumed to circumvent his hesitations about signing up for retraining as a surgeon. (His dithering was driving me mad, but that was not the point.) He was in such a rage that I thought our life together was over before it had properly begun. I was terrified I had broken us beyond repair, and that too leaves emotional traces that echo in my physical frame. While that was not the peak experience, it led to the lovemaking after. I. Still can’t find words for it. He’ll know.



  * our Boxing Day gathering in Baker Street, just last week. John’s face when Harry and Clara came in, John’s body as he held her, held them, so happy to have his sister there. I saw him lose a tension I didn't realise had gripped him for as long as I'd known him. The community around our sitting room table that evening was palpable, and the irritations did as much to cement the evening as the laughter and the kindnesses.



John slack and loose-limbed, John _almost_ drooling on my shoulder (he hates that). What ever happened to "alone protects me"? He was right then and he shows it every day. People. Friends. Even family. The chance-met and chosen family around that table, the birth family which may be fraught but is still woven into us by nature and nurture.

  * when John asked me to marry him, casually, without any formality or fanfare, in a snowstorm on St Sunday Crag, a few weeks ago. Marriage had _never_ been in my thoughts, never. Based on the examples I knew from the Work, it always sounded like a suicidal risk—even though my own parents are a placid and happy couple. The wind pummeling us on the heights, the snow driving into every crevice and orifice, the thin chilly air freezing nose and mouth and lungs—I will always associate these sensations with the most humbling question I’ve ever been asked.



  * when Watson christened me “Ba,” essentially Italian for “Dad.” It melted my strength the way a glass of primitivo does, making my legs go weak and burning and wobbly. I’m going to roll into this one her first real name, “Da,” and her first steps, and the first time she clearly demanded me not as an acceptable _substitute_ for her father, but as the father she was wanting at that moment.



John begins his slow climb out of the depths, gives his first intentional touch. Eyes squeezed shut, he nonetheless smiles, unmistakably aware of where we are, how tightly entangled. This is all I have wanted, for all these years. 

  * the first time I experienced John’s occasional and unexpected variation on lovemaking, insistently unidirectional. He’s capable of carrying on body worship for literal hours, and is reluctant to be touched or caressed in return as he does so. When I realised that all he wanted was for _me_ to feel adored—I felt awkward at first, but gradually more confident that it was what he wanted, and that I could accept it. That I didn’t have to win or seduce him; that for him my pleasure was an end in itself, not a step on the way to his own. Physically: it was rapturous, of course. But psychically: passively accepting John’s ministrations let me shed a degree of self-doubt and self-dislike.



That’s nine, so far. Nine that I could not rank in order of preference or perfection. Nine for my memory, though the list I will give John is considerably less detailed. I am eager to know whether I'm right about our overlap. (I know one item he will list that I didn’t: “ _when Sherlock played ‘Smile Though Your Heart Is Aching’ for me and Rosie and I nearly lost it._ ”)

Ah, there it is. Number ten:

  * This moment, right now. My ridiculous tantrum, my Genius Diva star turn as a man above reviewing and surveying and listing ten _anythings_ —has had the surprising result of letting me re-experience moments exalted and tremulous and priceless, ephemeral in all but memory. Remembering them all together has kindled an experience of bliss I did not see coming. Just as I did not see that the best-of list isn’t an end in itself; it’s a pretext for retrospection, introspection, nostalgia and joy. John saw it, though. He's looking supremely happy as he reaches for a scrap of paper beside the bed.



As the old song says, who’s the fool now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, friends, to all of you! I might look on end-of-year lists with a kindlier eye myself, having walked through this ficlet and having read some delightful ones on Tumblr. There's a lot to salvage from the difficult 2020. (I still don't want to know what the professional media announce are the ten best anythings of the year, though.)
> 
> This fic will end, really, I promise it will--on Sherlock's birthday, the 6th of January.


	27. The age of gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Which father did _you_ think would spontaneously combust when Rosie announced ... never mind, tell me in the comments!

**6 January 2051**

“Hi, it’s me.”

[...]

“No, nothing’s wrong, I just wanted to tell you right away.”

[...]

“I’ve heard from Rosie. She has news. First off, you’re wrong.”

[...]

“No, it’s not that rare, you just never admit it. And yes, you were: wrong. Because—it’s twins.”

[...]

“Yes, one of each.”

[...]

“Well, after all the trouble they had with IVF, she’s not exactly geriatric, but definitely on the later side for a first pregnancy. Twins won't necessarily be a complication.”

[...]

[...]

[...]

“Wait, what? Move to Italy? Have you—?”

[...]

[...]

“No, no, wait, _stop_ —She moved away half her life ago, love. She doesn’t need us to move there and stare at her as she starts _this_ part of it.”

[...]

“Well, sure. A long visit after the birth—we can be more helpful than obtrusive, if we stay in the Airbee. Though it’s been a long time since either of us took care of newborns.”

[...]

“It’s been a long time since we took care of Rosie, for that matter.”

[...]

“It’s only natural that we stay focused on her with a bit more obsessive, no, I mean _conscious_ attention. We’d lived half our lives without her, so she was a precious novelty when she came, and we had to take care of her. But we’re the background of her life. The default. She's never known life without us in it, so she's less needy for our presence. Makes perfect sense.”

[...]

“Well yes, of course our wishes count for something, you daft git.”

[...]

“Yes, but remember what I promised when we married: I’d put you and Rosie first until she was grown up, and after that I’d put you and me first. And I don’t think that you and I will really be better off moving to Italy and becoming our grandchildren’s nannies.”

[...]

“No, they really don't. Ale means to keep working at home, so Rosie will go back to her practice after maternity leave.”

[...]

“Okay, look, I’ve got a compromise. If one of us dies, the other can move to Italy and become a nanny.”

[...]

“No, the murder-suicide thing was never going to work. When you have an only child, you don’t get to off yourself when you lose your partner. For the same reason I just said.”

[...]

“Sweetheart, you’re starting to worry me. I’ll be home soon. I thought you were going to love this birthday surprise, but it seems to be more of a birthday surprise-attack.”

[...]

“Whatever. You sound rattled. I prescribe a session with the scalp massager.”

[...]

“Yeah, that was a genius gift from the sprog. This is what, the ninth one we've had since 2033? Trust you to wear out a bloody _scalp massager_.”

[...]

“I’ll be home in thirty. Meanwhile you get into a hot shower or a hot tub and try to calm down.”

[...]

“No worries, I’ll see about getting you stirred up again when I get home.”

[...]

“Sherlock?”

[...]

“Happy birthday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and if you left comments, _bless you_ for commenting! If comment-grubbing sounds ... grubby, let me just say that I learn more about writing and about each fic from reader comments than you would even believe. 
> 
> We stop here for this installment of the DtS story. In the coming months: a casefic co-written with 7PercentSolution in which Roberto and Sherlock team up for a high-stakes art theft case, and it is, er, fraught. And not just for John. 
> 
> Happy new year, happy Epiphany, and happy Sherlock's birthday to all!


End file.
